Throughout the existence of the postage meter, consistent efforts have been made to render the postage meters secure, and prevent the unauthorized printing of postage. By unauthorized printing of postage is meant the printing of a postage indicia on a mail piece without the sender of the mail accounting for the postage. Throughout the years, postage meters have generally used physical security, such as secure housings and non accessible connections. Despite such physical security, conventional postage meter imprints are subject to counterfeiting through the use of readily available fluorescent postage meter inks with rubber stamps or other printing dies. In addition, various digital printers, such as bubble jet printers and drop on demand ink jet printers, can be used to create an authentic appearing, fraudulent postage meter imprint.
It would be advantageous, and substantially reduce the opportunity of fraudulent postage indicia printing, to have a scheme whereby physical characteristics are imparted to the postage indicia that provide an indication of a genuine postage meter impression. In addition, it would be advantageous if such a scheme had the advantage of occurring at the time of printing of the genuine postage imprint without the possibility of an alteration thereafter.